Spicing up Twitter: What the Past Can Tell Us About the Musk Acquisition
It’s not hard to imagine a future in which private companies rule the world. Although it sounds like something out of science fiction at first, this idea is actually pretty close to reality. Right now, most of the hundred wealthiest entities in the world are corporations, and a lot of them are involved in the digital market. The past few weeks have been busy ones in the Digital Environment. November began with some staggering developments. Elon Musk’s stunt of carrying a sink into the Twitter offices and the subsequent announcements regarding the social media network’s fate were displayed on the front page of most major media outlets. There’s a lot to unpack with this kind of news, and a lot has been written about it in the last few weeks. But let’s forget Twitter and the other tech giants for a moment. This is an opportunity to think about how corporations behave when confronted with unpredictable situations. The fact of the matter is that the Digital Environment is a territory like any other in the physical world, and it’s subject to the same interests.
Whenever people are confronted with uncharted territory, we need to approach it and appropriate it somehow. Historically, there have been different ways of doing this. We’re going to need to do a bit of time travel, so bear with us for a moment. Long before the emergence of the great technological giants, one of the biggest corporations in history was in full operation. The relationship between the British Crown and the East India Company has a lot to say about how the Digital Environment is being appropriated.
Spice up your life
The East India Company was founded in the 17th century and remained in operation until it was dissolved in the mid-1800s. The company, set to trade with the East Indies and East Asia, enjoyed the crown’s imperial patronage. Over time, the company amassed enough power and wealth to become a political power in its own right. Although it didn’t hold sovereignty in its areas of operations, it exercised it in the name of Britain (although it didn’t suffer the upsets of accountability). At its peak, the East India Company was the largest corporation in the world. What started as a trading company for silk and spices came close to being a colonial power in and of itself.
Why did the British rely so heavily on a private company to enforce its colonial goals? In the 17th century, the major powers of the West competed for control of trading routes. It wasn’t easy for an empire to maintain dominion over its territories, and it was even harder if they were trying to expand their influence. That’s where alliances with private companies came into play. However, the kind of power the East India Company came to have eventually posed a problem for the British Government. While the company lobby sought greater control and privileges, Parliament refused to grant them even more autonomy. Finally, in 1858, the company was nationalized by the British Government.
Public territory
Given the nature of the Digital Environment and how different it is from everything we know, acknowledging it as a territory took time. Unlike Columbus when he reached the Americas, we weren’t aware that we’d arrived in a new dimension as we defined the bit and built the internet. It took us decades to understand that the digital sphere was a territory we could appropriate, just like any other. Since the beginning, this exploration was carried out mostly by private enterprises. Big tech companies are the ones in charge of laying out the roads the rest of us can use to get around, just like in the Americas and the Indies centuries ago.
Today, national governments aren’t very involved in what happens in the Digital Environment. They sometimes chime in when a whistleblower exposes certain behaviors or policies, but they mostly stand aside, partly because they depend on corporations to manage digital appropriation. However, the time has come to ask ourselves: who does the Digital Environment belong to? At the least, this is a discussion we ought to be having. Is it up to corporations to decide what the Digital Environment should look like and what we should be allowed to do there? Haven’t they already exceeded their royal permit? Similar to how the British Government nationalized the East India Company in the 19th century, shouldn’t we have a say in what a corporation is authorized to do? Isn’t it time to get the people, through their national governments, involved? In a context in which a public company as important as Twitter is going from public to private, this is a pressing question we should ask ourselves regarding all the tech giants. It’s time for the people to get more involved, not to be removed from the equation.
